Drafting a Sales Comp Plan? Halt.

February 4, 2014
by:
Subadhra Sriram

Many executives make the mistake of drafting a comp plan around their existing sales team. Instead, stop and think about the kind of people that would help your company grow. Then create a sales compensation plan around those folks. Next step: go hire those people. Get them started on the plan.

What do you do about your existing sales team? “You may need to put something in place for them to work,” says Scott Wintrip, of the Wintrip Consulting Group and StaffingU. But really it’s a temporary measure. The idea here is to figure out what kind of people you need to accomplish certain goals. Compare these to your existing teams. This will tell you where you are now and what you need to do. Read: Gap analysis.

It’s not just about the tactics that staffing executives need to employ. It’s about strategies, turning conventional wisdom on its head and real life case studies. “It has to be simple to the point where a recruiter or salesperson has no problem calculating their commission,” says Conor Smith. And they get motivated to do more — get bigger deals — as there is no ambiguity on how they are getting paid.

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